


right at home here in this ghost town

by perfectlyrose



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dimension Cannon, Dimension-Hopping Rose, Gen, Introspection, Kinda, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 19:23:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12754608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlyrose/pseuds/perfectlyrose
Summary: The need togo, to be anywhere buthere, was a buzz under her skin that kept her going when she should be exhausted and kept her up when she should be sleeping. Jumping through the Void repeatedly was preferable to giving in to the one inside of her chest.





	right at home here in this ghost town

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sequence_fairy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/gifts).



> For the amazing Jess on her birthday ♥ Love you!

Rose fingers tapped against the tabletop in an unsteady rhythm as a group of executives droned on about the cost of the dimension cannon project.

“This is eating up half of our operations budget and we’re not getting any results. Maybe it’s time to scale it back or shelve it all together,” some Italian-suited and over-confident man said.

Rose turned her glare on him and broke the silence she’d held throughout the meeting. “The universe is collapsing around us and you’re talking about giving up on saving it just to save some money.” She stood and had to hold in a laugh when half the people in the room scrambled to their feet as well. “See how well your money serves you when we all blink out of existence in a single terrifyingly painful moment because you decided to sit on your hands instead of spend a few quid to try and save the whole of existence.”

She left the conference room before anyone could figure out what to say in response and headed straight for the lab. She should have been there an hour ago instead of listening to idiots talk about things they knew nothing about. Her fingers continued their tuneless dance against her thigh as she walked.

The need to _go_ , to be anywhere but _here_ , was a buzz under her skin that kept her going when she should be exhausted and kept her up when she should be sleeping.

She had to keep moving, to keep doing, or she would drown in the void inside of herself. The dimension cannon project had pulled her out of head once and she would be damned if someone took it away.

“Marcus, is it ready to go?” Rose asked as she walked into the lab, already shedding her blazer to don the blue leather coat she’d taken to wearing on her jumps.

“Should be. Did we get the greenlight to keep going?”

“Yes,” she lied. She had no clue how they’d voted after she walked out but she didn’t care.

“How many are we doing today?”

“Don’t know,” Rose said, giving the man a shell of a smile and a shrug. “I’ll do a few direct jumps before coming back here. I’ll signal from each one.”

Marcus nodded, mouth thinning into a line. Rose knew they didn’t like it when she didn’t come back here after each jump but no one had dared to tell her no yet. She wasn’t sure if it was a perk of being the boss’s daughter or just the look on her face.

“Good luck,” he said, handing over the dimension cannon.

Rose nodded at him and strapped the cannon onto her wrist. “I’ll see you in a bit,” she said.

Her smile faded before she hit the initialization sequence on the cannon with tingling fingertips and flashed out of existence.

Cold. Silence. Pressure.

Nothing.

And then she stumbled back into being. Her lungs burned as they tried to remember how to hold air and Rose forced her eyes open, needing to see where’d she landed.

Desolate was the first descriptor she came up with. There were buildings nearby but they were obviously long abandoned. She stepped forward to look around, curiosity bubbling to the surface and displacing the nervous energy for a moment.

It looked like whoever had lived here years ago had been given warning before they had to leave. The structures were devoid of personal belongings other than a few pieces of large furniture.

The ghosts in the air were oppressive.

Rose shivered and continued looking, half expecting to find proof of some great calamity somewhere. The itch started reasserting itself with every step she took. There was no movement here other than her feet dragging through the dust and she was choking on the silence.

Another failure. She punched in the code on the cannon that indicated she’d found nothing and started the mental countdown until her next jump.

She kept walking, filing information away for the report she’d have to fill out when she got back.

( _Normal looking suburb much like the ones she’d dreamed about living in as a child, must not have traveled in time much since the buildings looked contemporary to her own time. No obvious signs of war or tragedy to explain the absence of people and wildlife. Loud with the silence that meant there was nothing around for miles and miles. No obvious threats. No sign of the Doctor. Mission not accomplished._ )

She kept walking to keep the buzz from consuming her whole in this ghost town.

(Rose fought her own ghosts every day, there was no way she was going to let these ones get the better of her.)

(Still, she wouldn’t stay an extra second here to give them an opportunity.)

A heavy sigh escaped, displacing more stale air. Twenty minutes until she could jump again.

She was starting to lose hope that she was going to find the Doctor in time. The multiverse was going to collapse or Torchwood was going to shut down her project and everything was going to be for nothing.

She’d jumped close to a hundred times now and the weight of those failures, of the constant buildup of hope and subsequent hit of disappointment, of the accumulating particles of void stuff was all starting to bow her shoulders.

Rose refused to break. She _refused_.

She would jump a thousand times if that’s what it took.

(She didn’t know what would be left of her if she squeezed herself through the Void that many times, put herself back together that many times, but she would still do it.)

Rose wandered into one of the empty buildings and started opening cabinets to peek inside. Just like everything else in this place, they were empty. The cabinet door swung shut with a sharp crack, loud as a slammed door.

She startled, heart skip-jumping before settling back into a slightly faster rhythm than before. It pounded in her ears, the loudest thing for miles, and Rose ignored the shaking of her hands as she checked how much longer before she could jump again.

Her hands only shook when she was standing still.

(She only felt like she was going to crumble under the weight of it all when she couldn’t run.)

(She didn’t think, tried not to think, about the fact that every step she ran added to the burden.)

Five more minutes.

Rose strode back out into the open air and took a deep breath. She programmed the cannon, signalling headquarters she was about to activate and head to a new location. New coordinates flashed across the display and she took a second to ask any power that might be listening that this jump would be her last.

The cannon beeped.

Rose took one last look around at the vacant dimension she’d landed in, wondered if there were any stars in the sky here anymore or if that was as empty as the houses. It was a mystery that would remain unsolved.

She pressed the initialization sequence and disappeared in a blue flash, becoming another ghost imprinted on the landscape.


End file.
